Covid testing - delays - what is the issue ? Just isolate

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cmalone

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No expert - why is testing required?

If person suspects they have covid - isolate and wait out the two weeks to recover ... nothing less. Nothing more.

General treatment is paraceutimol and fluids for majority of patients. Doctor cannot prescribe anything else.

Understand another five days without symptoms and that’s the height of it. ..,
 
What about your contacts...

What if you are a frontline worker with a cold...

If everyone with mild symptoms of a respiratory illness and their contacts isolate for that amount of time it adds up to a lot of people out of action.

Look at the numbers of people with negative tests.

Extensive and fast testing is a key part of any strategy for loosening restrictions
www.irishtimes.com

Coronavirus: Is insufficient testing a big weakness in our attack?

Eventual return to any type of normality will be hindered by stalled tests and results
www.irishtimes.com www.irishtimes.com
 
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cmalone said:
Agreed .., pre symptomatic transmission is the most dangerous stage I expect ...
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Pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic. They're estimating asymptomatic cases now account for 30-50% of cases here.
 
I haven’t seen the daily news briefings in a while but testing in Ireland seems to have ramped up considerably.

The Worldometer website is showing 153,954 tests or 31,179 per million population.
 
cmalone said:
No expert - why is testing required?
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I think that is a very good question and probably will be asked in our planning for a future pandemic.


It takes weeks to get tested
It takes further weeks to get the results.
There are too many false negatives - someone said it is as high as 40%

Not sure how useful such delayed and unreliable information is.

1) they might well tell someone "You don't have Covid" which could mean any of the following three things
  1. you did not have Covid when we did the test 10 days ago"
  2. You had Covid but it's a false negative
  3. You had Covid when you booked the test, but it was gone by the time you had the test
  4. , You did not have it then - but you might have developed it since

2) They tell someone"You had Covid 10 days ago when we did the test" which could mean
  1. You had it 10 days ago and might have recovered by now
  2. it was a false positive
Telling someone that they had Covid 10 days ago is probably useful in that they probably have some level of immunity, although this is not certain either.


If the test were quick and reliable, you could use it to test asymptomatic health care workers every couple of weeks.

Or residents in care homes.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
It takes weeks to get tested
It takes further weeks to get the results.
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I don't believe that is accurate Brendan. As of last night Fergal Bowers said that the timeframe (from being referred for a test to getting results) was 3-4 days in the community and 48 hours in hospitals. Have you any official data showing it is still taking weeks both to get a test and then to get results after? I think you are referring to how it was back in March.

The main reason I see testing being so important is to allow restrictions to be eased as testing will then help to calibrate future decisions; either further easing of restrictions or imposing more restrictions again.
It may also allow certain regions to be managed differently, if they have data to show some regions have a high number of cases while other regions don't.
 
Hi Ceist

My point is that it's pointless if it's not being done very quickly not just from the test to the results but from the symptoms to booking the test to doing the test to the results.

Brendan
 
Agreed Brendan but I think even at 3-4 days turnaround it's a lot better than the weeks and weeks you were suggesting. I'm not sure what they are aiming for in terms of turnaround time but if it was 48 hours that would certainly help the decision makers.
 
is every community facility now reporting a 3-4 day turnaround?, I'm still aware of individuals awaiting test results greater than 8 days
 
Yeah that would be the concern alright. You hear it said that turnaround is 3-4 days but if anecdotal evidence contradicts it would be good to get honest and accurate data on the real turnaround time.
 
Ceist Beag said:
it would be good to get honest and accurate data on the real turnaround time.
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Such transparency is disappointingly lacking. In mid-March Harris said we'd have 100,000 tests per week within a week . . now six weeks later they are saying 100,000 per week in three week time. Tests are not much use unless they can be procured and results obtained in a short time-frame. All this is delaying the unwinding of the lockdown.

Having failed on both testing and nursing homes it now looks like that advising against masks may have been another misstep and they now seem to be preparing the ground for a volte-face on same. We had a week or two more than some badly affected countries to prepare and learn lessons, we could have, and should have, done better.
 
This New York Times article says that those in groups which have a high risk of spreading the disease (medical sector, food processing, delivery and logistics, shop employees etc) should be tested every 5 days.
 
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To do this in Ireland we'd need to be conducting hundreds of thousands of tests a week.
 
But the accuracy of the swift tests outside hospitals makes them useless. UK wasted millions on home testing kits.
 
We need next day results (or 48 hour results at a minimum). We've had months to iron out the testing regime, but alas.
 
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Here in Aus we get a test within 1-2 days and results in 24 hours. Pretty good. But a much bigger country etc
 
The testing of the virus is only a fire fighting measure. It tells you if you are positive at a set moment in time. It helps to prevents the spread of the virus and reduce the human to human transmission by making the person aware they are positive.

We are a host for the virus helping it to replicate. Wealth, politics, age and gender are immaterial. People are dying every day. A young woman died today without any of her family because of the virus.

How do we utilise testing to reopen the country and keep our families safe? Laboratories are or will be able to test for current and past infections. Extra research should be carried out in tandem with infection testing.

Home kits are similar to pregnancy kits. False positives and negatives are possible. The medics advised against them.
 
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